


alternative

by aspalas



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Sharing Feelings, ada just wants to feel something, au if ada wasn't rescued in the garbage disposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23552578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspalas/pseuds/aspalas
Summary: Ada would have preferred an old fashioned upchuck over all this… whateverthisis.
Relationships: Leon S. Kennedy/Ada Wong
Comments: 11
Kudos: 42





	alternative

Maybe trekking back to the belly of the Raccoon City sewer system wasn’t the best plan Ada has decided in a pinch (and mentally, she’ll add on – _ever_ – when she submits her final assessment), but she wasn’t going to let this job go down the toilet (pun intended). Ada was lucky she managed to narrowly escape suffocating to death in that hideously smelly garbage pit and almost saying goodbye to her shoes in the process. Her dress, which she had picked due to its cheapness, had garnered a large seam that began at her right thigh and snaked its way to her armpit. After doing a quick once over, it almost resembled a battle scar for barely managing to escape that fucking Titan _again_ , but it did not matter to her very much.

If she had to run barefoot or naked to complete her mission, so be it. (It wouldn’t be the first time either, but that’s another story).

More indispensable than her clothes or her dignity at the moment was the rookie cop wandering around somewhere in the haze of waste. She needed Leon and she needed him fast. In all of the tumultuous evil villain back and forths she’d been subjected to, Ada had nearly forgot he had been shot, patched up, and now… well. Ada wasn’t reluctant to burying another body in her career; it’s just a part of the job by this point. Though a tiny part of her hoped it wouldn’t come to pass down here.

She continued on, dodging the undead as best she could, her stockings damp with grey water and bits of trash. Where her dress was ripped she could feel it clinging, cold, to her skin. It wasn’t until she spotted a humanoid figure tucked in the corner of a flickering light by the water’s edge that looked terribly familiar – and as she edged closer, a surge of relief ( _relief?_ ) passed through her. It was Leon himself, totally unaware of her approaching sloshing, sitting on the ground with his back to her. It wasn’t until she reached the ladder that she called out to him.

“Ada!” he exclaimed, slightly jumping at the sound. He pulled himself up and rushed toward the ladder.

“A little help here?” she said, pretending to wince. With his good arm, Leon pulled her up to the cold granite. A small mountain of herbs and bullet shells lay around him.

“Are you okay?” Leon asks, assessing from head to toe. Ada can tell he’s eyeing her torn dress, though not in a lens of lechery. Concerned, perhaps. “You don’t look as bad as I imagined you’d be.” Ada imagines he’s been going over quite a few scenarios she could have landed herself in during their separate survival campaigns.

“I’ve been better,” Ada sighs. “I just can’t believe all the crap down here.” She studies him right back, and fixes his gaze on his protruding bandage. “How’s that holding up?”

“It’s… okay. Did you…?” Leon touches the bandage delicately with his fingertips. Ada notices the black slime wedged under his nail beds – ick.

“I couldn’t let you bleed out on my clothes, could I?” Ada says, admiring her handiwork. Her thinly lined mouth quirks into a sardonic smile. “Not like it really mattered, anyway – I decided to take a swim in the garbage pile, and look where it got me.”

Maybe it’s her imagination, but Leon’s expression seems to change, like he’s on the verge of saying something back to her. He offers no quip in response; not a single wisecrack about how he was probably practicing his own swimming or something. Instead, he ends the conversation with a “I’m glad you’re okay” statement and turns his back to her.

Well, okay then. Ada feels frozen out all of a sudden, as if she said something inappropriate in the wrong setting with the wrong group of people. It doesn’t sit well with her that she’s suddenly being ignored for trying to make light of the situation – or maybe Kennedy lost someone in a freak sewer accident? _Nice going_ , she scolds herself. She suddenly craves a cigarette. That would dispel the awkward tension. It would let her relax and apologize for… whatever she needs to apologize for. As if expecting one to conjure itself out of thin air, Ada looks around anywhere in the gloom but at Leon.

In an attempt to distract herself her gaze travels to her arm, still sticky of sewer water, and realizes her wristwatch is still intact. Though bringing it a little closer to her face, she realizes the hands are frozen in time; broken, the piece of glass covering the face missing. Maybe falling into this hellhole did it in. She stares at it, transfixed; hoping the hands will magically begin to move, and to hear the telltale _tic tic tic_ of the passage of time. Ada raises the wristwatch to her ear in vain, but instead – the muffled sounds of quiet sobs and sniffles reach her ears. Certainly not a zombie nor mutated creature, it could only be –

“Kennedy –”

The words die in her throat as she finally turns her head and walks around him, but his crouched figure and wracking shoulders are a dead giveaway.

Ada thinks about the worst places to sit down and just let your emotions get the better of you – to lose your sense of rationality, and let instinct take the helm. The middle of a mission, definitely, is horrible. When you’re being held hostage isn’t great either, because you could be at your captive’s mercy. When your associate is about to sacrifice themselves to ensure your wellbeing and you’re told to live on. Yep, from her experiences, those are pretty bad places to just let the tears and snot and maybe puke flow. Ada can now say that the catacombs-slash-sewer-slash-laboratry of Raccoon City are another place where it’s not ideal to watch someone sit and cry their eyes out—over what she’s not sure.

Leon’s face is flush with tears, salt and dirt and blood mixing into his face and onto the grimy floor. Ada’s heart drops. This was _not_ part of the plan.

“Oh – oh. Hey… what’s wrong? Does your shoulder hurt?”

Ada crouches down to his level and tries to comfort in the gentlest tone she can muster, but even to her own ears, it sounds insincere. At their core, her words are synthetic and fake as the straps of her chiffon dress that is cutting into her shoulders. Watching the rookie cop before her shed tears gives her an inkling her of an old Ada, one with a different name and different hairstyle. A voice whispers in her ear, this could have been you. She shoos it away. Now is not the time.

“Kennedy,” she starts, then corrects herself. “Leon.”

Ada lays what she thinks— _hopes_ , because when was the last time has she even touched a human that didn’t end in their death— is a comforting hand on his good shoulder.

“Sorry,” he croaks out. Desperately rubbing away the tear tracks with a dirty hand, smearing more dirt on his face. “I’m sorry, Ada, I –” he hiccups, unable to continue his sentence. Sorry for _what_ , she wants to ask. Sorry, maybe, for the state of what they’re both in? Maybe he’s dying and she can’t tell. But as she squeezes his shoulder, he feels warm—not fading. He’s very much alive (for now).

Ada considers what might be the cause of these unprecedented waterworks. Number one reason: the injury, obviously. It probably hurts like hell. However… if she were a cop, the state of things befallen the once majestic museum turned police department might just get her heart to clench in a kind of sadness recognizing the loss of the city, and mourn for it. The zombified civilians certainly could earn a gut-wrenching hurl from a person who hasn’t seen death. This place, she recognizes, is a graveyard waiting to happen—but it’s nothing to cry over for long. It’s just another tombstone on the grave that has become Raccoon City. _Will become_ , past tense.

“Don’t apologize.” Both of them crouching in garbage, feces, and whatever the fuck else feels uncomfortable and claustrophobic. Maybe that’s the cause of the waterworks. Her heels aren’t exactly comfortable supporting her on her haunches either. She forces herself to relax her legs, her spine, and sits in the muck. “Let it all out,” she instructs. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got you.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles again. His voice is small, delicate; to Ada, it sounds like it could break like glass if she says the wrong thing. Now he looks at her, blue eyes reddened and snot running into the mess on his face, creating a mixture of bodily fluids that makes Ada wants to gag. But she won’t, because who knows _what_ he’ll do: men could be emotionally vulnerable one minute and choke you the next. If she didn’t know better Ada would think he’s sixteen and not twenty-one. She blames it on the dim lighting and not her overactive imagination.

Ada also notices, beyond his beautiful, sad eyes, that he has undead brain matter matted in his hair. She resists the urge to pick it out.

“You’re lucky you’re not on the clock,” Ada says instead. “I didn’t know pigs could cry. Don’t they teach you that in the academy?”

Leon shakes his head, letting out a small hiccup. “The chief is probably dog food right now. I think he would let it slide this one time.” Ada tries to stop her lips from quirking into a smirk, but fails spectacularly.

“You’ve got a point there, Kennedy.” Her right hand reaches over to his hair, impossibly silky despite all the grime, and manages to work her fingers quickly around the mass. A dark, almost hamburger patty-like object emerges from his locks and now is sitting, sticky, in her hand. “You got this in your hair, too.” She tuts. “Been busy while I’ve been away, huh?” She says it more to herself than him. She had sneered at him earlier for imagining her fate, but her scenarios about him ran through her head when they were separated were most likely just as gruesome. 

As she deposits the gunk on the dirty floor, she imagines the blush in his cheeks, uncertainty in his movements, even the pinpricks down his spine at their contact. But when she returns his gaze once again, Ada is greeted by more tears welling up his eyes, threatening to spill over.

“Leon, what…?”

“Sorry, Ada…”

“Stop apologizing.” She sighs. Of all the hangers-on she could have met, she didn’t expect a crybaby. (Maybe what she really means is, _someone with a soul_. Someone who _feels_ something.) “How about you tell me what’s wrong, because I’m so tempted to leave you right here again.”

Leon wipes his eyes again. Ada hates how his eyes are so captivating, so blue… it makes her think of the ocean. An intrusive thought suggests she’d really like to go once this is all over. Ada disagrees; she wants to be dry for the rest of her life at this point.

“It’s just…” he gulps, steadying himself. “I guess it’s just redundant at this point, because I made it this far. _We_ made it this far. But it now really just hit me that every person here is dead. Well, _un_ dead too. I thought on my first day, I’d be getting ready to help people.” He gesticulates to his bandaged shoulder. “Now I’m sitting here like _this_ , and we’re in a sewer, and…” he shudders. “It’s just. A lot. And,” he continues, “When I woke up… I don’t know… I just felt alone. I don’t know. Like maybe I was the only one left here. In the city… maybe even in the world.”

He turns his eyes on Ada, shiny again with moisture. “You’re hurt… I’m injured… we could be both dead. And I don’t even know about Claire. _If_ she’s still alive. We could be the last two people alive in the city, Ada.” Despite the tears, the runny nose, and all the soot, she can tell his both his eyes and his words are clear. Unclouded. Pure. Even in the musky darkness of the sewer, she feels as though his eyes are shining. Ada would have preferred an old fashioned upchuck over all _this_ … whatever this is.

“It’s tough being alone,” Ada tries. She’s not good at being sympathetic, but she understands. She almost feels like shedding a few tears at this kid’s pure, unfiltered purity; frustration finally bubbling over at all the curveballs he’s been thrown in a matter of hours. She can’t remember if she was like that, once. She thinks so.

Maybe when this is all over, she’ll cry like a baby for her lost optimism. And for this kid too, who could easily be caught up with these organizations when all is said and done.

“Leon, we have to keep moving.” Ada grips his hands firmly, reassuringly, convincingly. Convincing both him and herself. “We have to help ourselves, because no one else will. Maybe… just maybe, we can help other people on the outside.”

Leon considers this. His hiccups have stopped, and he’s slowly coming to his senses. Rationality is beginning to come back to him. “Right… the FBI can definitely help us,” he says slowly, recalling Ada’s badge. “Yeah. Sorry, Ada. I just kinda…”

“I told you, stop apologizing.” She digs through her utility belt and produces a packet of tissues that she shoves in his hands. “Wipe your face. You look like shit.”

Leon accepts it, and blows his nose with his good hand. The honking blow reverberates in the sewer, and Ada almost laughs. She almost wants to do a lot of things right now. The thought of giving him a hug crosses her mind. An encouraging, heartfelt pep talk might work. How about _We’ll get out of this together_? Hmm. Maybe a confident _I’ve got your back, rookie_ would probably be appropriate for this situation. She looks away, feeling embarrassed for no reason. Being sincere is not her strong suit.

She’s clearly losing it. It's almost laughable – babysitting a kid that’s barely a man and actually feeling something that isn’t pure disgust, or frigid indifference? All her past associates – living or dead – would laugh at her for even thinking about this crap. All because her current partner (though, is he really one if he doesn’t realize it?) had to sit down and weep like a normal person. A human, even.

In lieu of any physical contact, Ada brushes herself off and he extends a manicured but dirty hand down to Leon. “If you’re done hosting your pity party, I’m ready to go.”

A determined, fiery gaze meets Ada’s cool sneer. The mask is back on, ready to face Leon. Ready to face Annette, Umbrella, whatever comes their way. She’ll be ready to complete her mission – and if it includes killing him, so be it. Ada Wong was born to survive, not to sympathize. He raises his arm to meet outstretched grasp.

“I’m ready. Let’s go, Ada. Thank you.”

“I’m counting on you, rookie.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to write Leon crying and Ada comforting him (with her impeccable edge ofc). That is all. (This is also republished and heavily rewritten - I wrote this last year and orig. published in Jan/20.)


End file.
